The house with the red door
by orangerie
Summary: Death comes for the Hand, the realm feels it.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Welcome to this strange little fic. I wrote this primarily for my own benefit. I can't say exactly where it came from, but I suspect it has to do with a friend who passed away. While feedback of any kind is not anticipated or expected, if anyone else can follow this and derive some enjoyment from it, that is fine too. A few hints: it is set in a vague post-series world where Dany is Queen. Dany, Jon, and Tyrion form a queer poly family in this fic- the happiest ending I can imagine for them. You can guess at other characters' situations from how they are mentioned, but this fic is not concerned with them, it maintains a very tight focus on the people who, when they're not in King's Landing, live in a small cottage in the woods... a house with a red door.

* * *

_i.__Ténèbres_

_"there is light in the darkness, if one can suffer the darkness."_

Bitterly cold and weary, Jon walked in the front door. Daenerys wasn't there-she was in the capital—but Tyrion should be home. As he cracked open the door he could smell the fire burning in the hearth but the room was dark, a contrast to the brilliant heavy fog outside.

"Hello," he said to the gloom inside, shaking snow off his cloak.

To the left, was a partition that divided the bedchamber from the kitchen in the little cottage, and Jon turned left toward the fire, toward the bed where Tyrion was probably sleeping, although it was only late afternoon. The dragons were stirring outside. He could hear their snuffling and grumbling as they moved closer to the cottage hearth.

Jon pulled his boots off and reached out a hand to the bed, finding Tyrion. With a quick easy movement, Jon pulled aside the covers and laid down next to him.

"Well," said Tyrion quietly, beside him. "Has the Wall fallen?"

"No," said Jon, feeling an ache settle into his bones now that he was home, and warm, again. It was almost pleasant.

"I thought it must have, because otherwise you'd never come home."

Jon turned to his lover. "Perhaps it fell but I wanted to come home."

Tyrion's face was barely visible in the dim light, but Jon make out the distended slope of his forehead, the fall of lank hair. Pulling himself closer, he leaned over and kissed Tyrion on the mouth.

Tyrion made a low sound in his throat and moved closer to Jon, twining his dark curls around his fingers. Jon closed his eyes and put his head on his lover's chest.

It was so much easier now, than it was in the old days, the days before they trusted each other. In the beginning the three of them circled each other like cats, each desiring something from the other two without even knowing what that was. He and Daenerys had been the first to acknowledge it— Jon felt a twitch below his belly thinking of his and Dany's first encounter, the return of an insane passion he remembered only dimly, from a few moments with Ygritte.

He wished Dany was here now, in bed with them where she belonged. They were not complete if one of them was missing.

Many years ago he'd seen Tyrion again, for the first time since he was a boy, and though he loved Daenerys, the moment he heard that old familiar laughter in the great hall, he'd been lost. Resting his head against Tyrion's chest, hearing his breath rise and fall, Jon felt a rush of gratitude.

Jon woke up what felt like hours later, but it could have been as little time as a few minutes. Tyrion was speaking into his ears, a warm low voice, "You may want to move over. Our wife is coming home."

Then Jon felt more awake. "Dany? But isn't she in the capital?"

"She was due to come home a fortnight after you returned. But _you_ overstayed your welcome at the Wall," said Tyrion, his tone like a maester's, chastising.

Sure enough, not long afterward someone opened the red door to the cottage and stood in the doorway with snow melting in her cloak, much as he had done. It was later now, and the last of the sunset cast a faint red shadow on her silvery hair. Jon felt his throat grow dry—it had been half a year since he'd seen her—but he didn't move to get up and greet her, nor did Tyrion.

It was their custom. In this cottage it was dark and warm and close and everyone spoke softly and moved slowly, never raising their voices. They'd been through three wars, all of them, and any of them was like to startle at the slightest break in the quiet of the Northern wood.

Dany took off her cloak and laid it on the hook next to Jon's. Her hair was braided, messy, falling over her shoulders. She took each of their faces in her hands and kissed them, before climbing into bed as well, the firelight outlining her face and reflecting in her eyes.

As she settled in opposite Jon, with Tyrion between them, she reached out her hand and laced her fingers with Jon's.

Jon tilted his head and met her gaze, and there was warmth there, as real as the flames in the hearth, and Jon smiled and she smiled back.

Once again the Wall had taken the better part of Jon. Tyrion knew it from the heavy way Jon took off his cloak, as if lifting an enormous weight. He only half shook off the snowflakes from his clothes; when he slipped into bed with Tyrion it reminded him forcibly of Ghost, the dog surely on the prowl just outside, the way he brought the cold and damp into their bed so unconsciously, like an animal running to his master. Tyrion didn't mind, especially not when Jon kissed him.

Every once in a while Jon kissed him like this, like Tyrion was a fair young maid rather than a fat, hideous little man of forty five. But Jon settled in beside him and buried his face in Tyrion's chest, not wanting to talk. Tyrion stayed silent. He'd learned silence now, for the house with the red door had taught it to him. That, and the tremors, and the pain in his ailing body, sharp as steel on bone.

But none of that mattered when Jon's dark hair flowed like water through Tyrion's fingers. The boy was asleep in minutes, and Tyrion let him, humming Seasons of my Love softly under his breath, watching the fire flicker.

"Our wife is coming home," he reminded Jon after a while. An hour had passed, the fire was dying, and the winter sun was setting wanly outside. The boy had stayed longer at the Wall than Tyrion would have liked, but now was not the time to mention it.

_Our wife._

Those words were true enough, though they'd never had a fasting ceremony under the old gods or the new. Their union was blessed by no one. Yet they belonged to each other. What a surprise it had been.

He doubted them for a long time, but Dany and Jon were kind—no, more than that, what they'd done was beyond mere kindness—and they used words like _love_ when they spoke to him. And so there was another cottage, here at the end of his life. And this one, his father could never take from him.

Daenerys Stormborn was at the door, draped in a long crimson cloak. She was older now, a woman and not a girl, her hips rounder and her face set with the authority of a queen. She'd ruled for well over a decade now, though she'd produced no heir and married no king.

She was quite a woman.

And yet, when she approached the bed there was a hint of her weariness too.

"Blood of my blood," she murmured. Quietly, the cottage was always quiet.

It was a Dothraki saying, fit for a ruler claiming her dearest subjects. As she cupped his jaw for a kiss, Tyrion liked being among her subjects. She greeted Jon the same way, before settling in beside him like an animal burrowing.

That was what they all were, was it not? The cottage was dark as a warren.

But Tyrion preferred it that way.

* * *

Jon and Tyrion were half-asleep when she came home. She saw them even in the darkness that met her when she pushed open the red door—which she'd painted, a remembrance of what had been stolen from her, and was now restored after so many years.

Her heart swelled painfully in her chest, and she stood in the doorway for a moment, feeling the chill at back become more and more impotent. She could tell so much from their postures. Jon was exhausted, as always, and Tyrion, as always, in pain.

For her part, she was half-sick with the lies and treachery of King's Landing, and the sight of them lying there, curled up like young dragons in that simple cottage house, was good to see.

Half a lifetime ago—and yet, not long ago at all—Dany didn't know these men. Her world was bound up in Jorah and Viserys and Ser Barristan and Missandei.

Not they were all dead but one, and the last was wed and occupied with many children.

For a long time there had been no one to replace them, however much she pined for the Stark bastard, as he was called, who was so slender and dark. Eventually she found he pined for her as well. His family, hungry as any other in the Seven Kingdoms, told him to wed the Queen, and he'd refused. But something about their tie to one another had always felt flimsy and forced.

She'd watched helplessly as Jon looked at her Hand instead of her. Tyrion in those days had been treacherous as a snake, a man she'd never trusted. Infamously ugly as well. But Jon looked at him like he was the sun and stars.

Slowly Dany came to know Tyrion in a different way. Over many glasses of wine, he told her of the exact way he killed his father. She told him of her brother and his golden crown, while he nodded gravely.

"Would you like to be married?" she'd asked him then, hoping the answer would be yes. Anything to get him away from Jon.

"More than anything," he said, looking away. "But there are no women that I know who would… Accept that arrangement."

She'd bedded him on impulse that night. How strange it had been, to watch this man she'd so greatly feared, fall apart in her hands.

Now she loved him almost as she loved Jon.

"Blood of my blood," she whispered as she settled in beside them.

Jon looked up at her and smiled faintly, a silhouette ringed in firelight. For once, he was not thinking about the Wall and its preparations and their Enemy, mostly beaten but still occasionally alive, on the other side. He was so brave, her nephew. Her lover.

She smiled back at him, squeezing his hand.

* * *

Tyrion woke in the middle of the night, sometimes. Force of lifelong habit, something he'd never been able to break. It was a surprise each time to wake up in that dim warm room and turn toward those young (younger), unblemished bodies beside him and find they'd graced him—him- with their presence. Daenerys woke in the night sometimes too.

He knew she was awake because her hand (hot, her skin seemed to conceal a hidden fire) would find him and pin him to the mattress. Softly, but still firm.

She hated when he tossed and turned.

He slept more deeply now.

* * *

Daenerys lost track of the days she spent at the house with the red door. Soon it was early spring, and the snows began to melt.

Sometimes Jon came with her, and they balanced on the sinking sand of the riverbanks like children, their cheeks glowing pink, Ghost trailing alongside her.

Once or twice when they reached the river she slipped off her dress and waded into the water. Snow-fed, the river was cold, but the pain that met her was bearable because it meant she could tease Jon.

But Jon was a son of the North, and respected the cold. No matter how pure and clean she looked in the sunlight, rising from the river, he would never follow her.

But he could steal her clothes, faster than she could swim back to the river bank.

She chased him and tackled him and they ended up in a sticky mess of sand and tangled limbs, but soon kissing roughly with tongues and teeth.

When they returned home, they stood in the doorway with their boots on and kissed some more, their lips swelling like bee stings, tasting of salt. When Tyrion locked them out as a jape, Dany knocked on the window pane.

Eventually he relented, waddling back to the doorway and making them beg one last time before he swung the door open and they traipsed directly to the bath, where Jon fucked her with an urgency that had been building since the river. Washed clean, they fucked again while toweling off, him taking her from behind, the only man who'd done so since Drogo, the only one she would allow to use her this way.

With Jon she was never ashamed of anything.

Once sated they settled into bed, where Tyrion lived.

Tyrion could not often join their games anymore but he did hold both of them very near to him, and Jon and Dany both laid their heads on his chest and listened to his rattled breathing. Dany looked up and met his black-and-green gaze, and it was filled with both irony and deep affection.

All three of them were naked and Dany realized in that moment she did not quite know where she ended, and Tyrion began, and Tyrion ended, and Jon began.

"I love you," she said to the air, but it might have been either of them who heard it.

* * *

"Missandei has been a fair judge of Meereen."

Dany was sitting outside soon after returning to the house with the red door. Tyrion was with her, and they were sitting in the garden, and she was worrying a flower like a young girl; its petals were wilting in her fingers.

Tyrion watched her passively.

"You want to leave her in power," he said.

Reading between the lines as always.

Dany sighed, looking down at the flower in her hands. Missandei had managed her overseas kingdoms since Dany had come to Westeros, a fact which set many tongues to wag in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros— for there were those who would have the world believe the Silver Queen, an impotent _woman_, could not secure her own rule across so many kingdoms.

The truth was simpler and more complicated: it did leave the Seven Kingdoms too open for a revolt if she flew to Meereen every season, but she did wonder whether Essos was hers in name only, though she trusted Missandei.

But she missed her old friend too, as well as the Great Grass Sea, the Pyramids of Meereen, and living in a place where there wasn't endless winter. They were now thawing from her second Westerosi winter. She was growing older now, and she missed the sun.

"I do," she said. "But I want to visit her."

"Then visit her," Tyrion said. Still watching her intently, he paused for a moment and then made an offer that made her chest constrict. "I can go to the capital in your stead."

_And when I returned, you'd be dead._

Dany felt a raw edge in her throat. If the politics in the capital didn't take him, his illness would.

Although he refused to be treated by a maester, she and Jon knew he was ill. It had come on late last summer, after she stripped him of his title as Hand, as if that had been all that sustained him. Not a fortnight later he began to sleep like the dead. Then there were the other signs, his skin yellowed like old wood, he grew plump, he was sick but he tried to hide it.

"I have been Hand of the King twice, and yours once before," Tyrion prompted her now.

Dany tossed the flower back into the bush it came from.

"You wouldn't even make it to King's Landing," she said.

Tyrion leaned back, and smiled, a sad, rueful smile. "I see my Queen has little confidence in me."

"I have confidence in you," she said, and she was surprised at how hard it was to force words out of her throat. "But that city, it eats people, even the strongest, and you…"

"Are not at your strongest." Tyrion finished for her.

Dany's vision began to blur with tears but she did not move toward him.

"I see," Tyrion said. "That is likely wise."

He sighed. "When I was the Master of Coin, I remember a fierce warrior from Dorne saying much the same about my own father… Even the strongest do not live forever."

Dany sat down beside him. "I am afraid, Tyrion," she said slowly.

"Of what?"

"I am afraid that I will leave for Meereen, and when I return… I cannot leave you."

She saw him as if for the first time. He was still smiling but it was that kind of sublime and terrible smile he sometimes had now, shot through with immense pain.

She buried her head in his shoulder and wrapped her arms around him, and while his body was soft there were hard knots in his shoulders and knees and when she touched him he shifted away as though she was hurting him.

He wanted to comfort her, as well, the way he did so often in her early days of ruling, the nights they never spoke of, after Jorah died.

It had taken her almost six years to return the care he'd given, and she regretted every minute of the delay, so sure she'd been in those days that he'd wanted to control her, like his father had done to hers. So sure had she been that he was ugly inside as well as out.

She held him and touched his hair, hoping he would understand what she was trying to say.

He turned her face to his, and kissed her, his hands gentle in her hair.

"You have given me so much," he said lightly, when they pulled away. "More than I deserved."

But it was not a question of deserving, not for any of them. The war had ruined them all, and Daenerys herself had cut ties with nearly every former ally, losing Jorah and Ser Barristan, drifting away from Missandei and even Irri and Jhiqui. Were it not for Jon and Tyrion, she would have found herself alone these last long years. Alone, though high above them all, surrounded by false friends who sought her friendship for their own ends, and courtiers who flattered to their own gain.

But Jon had been her bulwark, nearly a husband, like Drogo.

And Tyrion was almost as much father as lover.

_Like Jorah should have been. _

For all the gods had taken away, they'd given freely. One man to replace Drogo, and another man still to replace Jorah.

But no child had ever come to replace the babe she'd lost.

The three of them—Jon and Tyrion and Dany—were peculiarly alone in the world, cast out or set apart from their families, and all childless. The bitterness of that still stung her. Alone of the three of them, Jon was the only one who had a real chance to wed and have children. But for some reason, he'd chosen to stay.

Wrapped around Tyrion, her head on his shoulder, she could almost fool herself that theirs was a true family, that they had hope yet.

* * *

"He offered to go to the capital in my stead," Dany said.

It was late, and Tyrion was asleep. She and Jon were sitting at the dinner table over half-glasses of wine and picked-at roast pheasant.

"He can't," Jon said.

Dany pushed her fork around the plate idly. She did not want to ask the next question but she'd come to the conclusion it was the only one she could ask.

"I know," she said. "Will you go then?"

Jon looked at her incredulously. "So you can go to Meereen and I can go to King's Landing? You know I am no politician. Send my sister instead."

_I do not trust your sister_, Dany thought, but kept it from reaching her lips. Sansa Stark was an able ruler in the north but she was too close to the treacherous Tyrells. Dany feared what sending Lady Sansa south might bring.

"And besides," Jon added, his voice dropping. "I'm not leaving him."

Dany understood. Often she would prefer to never leave the house with the red door, herself. But she and Jon were relatively young and healthy, and they had a duty: seven kingdoms to rule here, and kingdoms across the narrow sea beside.

Jon looked like he was fighting back something he wanted to say. Dany leaned forward, covering her hand with his.

"I talked to Sam," Jon said.

Sam was one of Jon's friends, and a brilliant maester.

"He says that Tyrion is dying."

Dany closed her eyes. Felt the weight of those words wash over her, crushing as a wave.

Of course she knew already.

He knew it, too, if she knew him. Once he had longed for the intrigue of court, and stolen away to Winterfort whenever he could find an excuse to do so. But for the past year he stayed at home.

He didn't want anyone to see him. How he had deteriorated. And even now he was asleep in their bed, sleeping away the pain that plagued him, wearing bruised and yellow skin.

Dany put her head in her hands.

When she opened her eyes she saw Jon's expression, it was shattered as she felt.

"What did he say the affliction was?"

"He doesn't know for sure, since he hasn't examined him in person," Jon said, slumping forward under the weight of his words. "But he said that what I described… that he sees it in men who drink. Before they die."

Dany smiled bitterly. Yes, Tyrion drank. He always had, less after building the house with the red door, less once he lived with Dany and Jon, but more—far more—when he had been Hand.

"Please don't tell him," Jon pleaded with her.

Dany let Jon draw her closer to him, and for a long time they sat the kitchen table, holding each other, looking out at the bedroom like it was an hourglass, sand slipping ever faster.

* * *

He was dying. Tyrion knew this. First there was the urge to sleep, which had been so overwhelming when it first set in. It was like he was trying to make up for years of sleeplessness.

Then there was the itching and the bruising. He'd never been beautiful to begin with, so when his skin was suddenly colorful as tapestry, all yellow and blue, and full of strange little nicks, it was just another affliction he'd suffered, another mark added to that column.

Then came the pain.

Oh, the pain had been the worst. It had stolen the world out from under him. His joints ached and his belly ached and his scars from Blackwater were fresh as though those blows had occurred yesterday.

He stopped having sex and even drinking wine, as penance, but something cold and foul was creeping into him, and as soundly as he slept, he still woke up gasping in the middle of the night sometimes, realizing with terrible, sudden clarity he could not stop whatever this was.

The Stranger was coming for him.

He did not want to alarm Jon or Dany, so he politely declined each of their offers to take him to a maester, for he knew what the maesters would say.

And truly, he'd lived all he could. Not in the ways he'd anticipated perhaps, but lived anyway. Never wed to a woman who truly loved him, with no children and no lands, he had nothing to show for the extraordinary adventure life had invited him to almost five decades ago. But, all the same, he had saved a city and ruled kingdoms in Essos and Westeros, he'd sat the Iron Throne, played the game and lost it, and sometimes—rarely—won it, and shook his fist at the Father himself. He'd stood by as every member of his family died.

Kinslayer, kingslayer, murderer, and turncloak, he was the least and the last of the lions, and after all that living, more than once he'd considered turning the crossbow on himself.

But there was Jon, and Jon had saved him. Dany as well, though he had saved her in return.

That night, after his talk with Dany in the garden, he forced himself to stay awake as Jon and Dany discussed Meereen. Dany proposed that Jon take her place in King's Landing. Jon countered, offering Sansa in his place.

"I don't want to leave him," Tyrion overheard, and he knew instantly that whatever else it was about, this was a conversation about him.

_Eavesdroppers seldom hear good of themselves_, he thought.

But he couldn't help himself.

"I talked to Sam," Jon was saying.

_The maester_.

"Tyrion is dying."

A chill stole over him.

It was one thing to think it in the privacy of his mind, it was another to hear it out loud in Jon's voice.

"What is the affliction?" Dany asked.

"He sees it in men who drink."

Jon's voice was quiet, but not so quiet that Tyrion couldn't hear the accusation in those words.

He felt a stirring of anger in his chest. _Says the boy whose family is still alive. If you had a life like mine, you would drink as well. _

Then, with the uncomfortable feeling that accompanied seeing something he wasn't supposed to see, he watched through the shadowy light as Dany and Jon held each other.

Both beautiful, they belonged together more than he had ever belonged to either of them, no matter how much they insisted otherwise, and they would go on after his death, carrying on the strange family they had built.

Suddenly Tyrion couldn't stand watching anymore. Rising from bed, he waddled into the kitchen.

When they saw him, Jon and Dany looked startled and ashamed.

"Send Sansa," he told them. "The Tyrells won't make trouble for you." His voice was soft and hoarse it almost couldn't reach them. "They should remember the protection of the Night's Watch and how it saved their precious harvest last fall. So they will not plot."

"Tyrion—"

"Please don't."

It was late and he didn't want their pity, he only wanted to feel them in bed beside him.

"I love you both more than I can say," Tyrion said. "But what you were proposing was foolish. You must go to Meereen and cement your rule, or in a generation you shall see Missandei's children— who have little cause to share their mother's affection for you— rule in your stead."

He looked to Jon. "I was once married to Lady Sansa, and I doubt, as you do, that she would play at the game and risk war, no matter how sweetly the Tyrells flatter her."

"Please," he asked. "Come to bed."

Shocked into silence, they followed him.

Even with both of them in bed with him, Tyrion laid awake for a while still. Jon was awake too, his dark eyes trained on Tyrion.

"Are you all right?" Jon asked.

"No," Tyrion whispered back, very quietly, almost a breath.

"But I am ready."


	2. Chapter 2

_ii. lumière_

A moon's turn after that night, twenty-one days after Dany left for Meereen, Tyrion was dead.

It was as if all the breath had left Jon's lungs. It shouldn't have been a surprise—in some ways, it came later than expected.

A moon's turn before, Dany climbed onto Drogon after holding Tyrion close to her all morning, after they walked through the garden one last time, and the moment she was gone, Tyrion's condition worsened fivefold. Jon stayed behind to deal with it while his sister ruled the capital and his lover appeased Meereen.

It was grimly sad work, being there while Tyrion slowly died. The first fortnight they were both sure he was going to go. His belly became swollen and distended, the yellow tinge of his skin more pronounced than ever, and accompanied by fevers and sicknesses.

At the worst moments, Tyrion begged Jon to end it.

At night he was plagued by nightmares, and Jon soon became accustomed to hearing Tyrion's family's names in the dead of the night, recited with eerie calmness, and always returning to one in particular.

"Jaime, my brother Jaime, Jaime Lannister," Tyrion whispered in his sleep.

The dead Kingslayer seemed to have an almost hypnotic hold on Tyrion in those final days. Sometimes Jon would watch Tyrion wake each morning with an almost-feral gleam in his eyes and for a moment it was as if the man had one foot in each world, the living and the dead.

As if Tyrion was looking at Jon and seeing only Jaime.

"Shh, it's all right," Jon would say, and push back Tyrion's sweat-drenched hair.

"I'm here and I love you," Jon would say, but sometimes even that could not cut through Tyrion's delirium.

And Jon did love him, in a wrenching, horrible way that left him wondering if the gods were blind or just cruel, to inflict so much suffering on the man that he loved, a man who had saved the Seven Kingdoms from self-destruction many times over.

But when Jon woke up one morning and found Tyrion cold and still beside him, it was over too suddenly. Leaving the body in the bed, Jon went into the garden on his hands and knees and wailed until he threw up.

Tyrion had died in the night.

And Jon never woke up, never knew. Wasn't that unlike him, to go so quietly? Tyrion Lannister, who couldn't even enter a room without drawing a dozen pairs of eyes, had gone out in the middle of the night, alone, in utter silence, like a candle blown out.

The truth of it pierced Jon like a lance, it stunned him, it froze him, it flooded his whole body like ice water, leaving him numb.

It was as breathless and soundless and terrifying as the eye of a storm. Jon had known grief before, had said goodbye to Robb and Ygritte, but this was different, this wasn't a glorious death in battle, this was Tyrion dying silently, ignominiously, ill and broken, in bed beside Jon without even once waking him up.

It was absurd.

"I have a tender spot in my heart for cripples, bastards, and broken things," Tyrion had said once. He would have known, since he'd been all of those things himself.

Bastard.

Jon wanted to scream at Tyrion for leaving him alone. For leaving all of them.

You were the one who made the decisions we couldn't make. You were the one who ruled us.

He wore no crown, but his death was like the passing of a king. Jon half-wanted to fly south and spread the news himself.

He settled on writing a letter to his sister.

Ring all the bells in King's Landing,

he wrote. _Tyrion Lannister is dead._

Both Jon and Daenerys had leaned on him for counsel, and who was there now to guide them? To smooth the rough edges that sometimes surfaced between a Targaryen who solved every problem with fire and blood, and a Stark boy wedded to his honor?

Who was there to walk beside in the garden? Who could he hold fast to in the night, to depend upon to serve as a warm, solid presence, when all else was shifting sand?

_I loved you_.

Jon went several turns of the moon without speaking to any living soul, but he talked to Tyrion every day. He hadn't realized there was so much left to say.

But there was something left to do, and no one but Jon to do it.

He took the body south, to Casterly Rock.

Days before he died, during one of his rare coherent moments, Jon asked what he wanted to be done with the body.

Tyrion went silent for a moment.

"When I was born," he said. "My lord father wanted to cast me into the sea."

"Never did it, of course," he added at the look on Jon's face. "Though I suspect he considered it often, even once I was older."

Cast me into the sea.

Casterly.

Jon had never been to the shattered stronghold of the Lannisters.

It was a castle of ghosts now, manned by none stranger than Sandor Clegane, the Hound.

But Clegane was not Jon's concern. In fact, having him there, staring at the shrouded corpse Jon carried in on the back of a dragon, felt vaguely obscene, given what he knew of Tyrion and the Hound's distaste for one another.

"If you say one word," said Jon. "I will open your throat and it will be your last."

"Just this, then. Is that who I think it is?"

Jon pushed roughly past him in reply, beyond caring about the man's so-called prowess in battle. Jon had been tested against the white walkers of the North, and in spite of his sister's inexplicable fondness for him, Clegane was nothing to Jon.

"I will require a room for one night," called Jon over his shoulder. "No more."

Casterly Rock was large and empty and strangely cold, in spite of the temperate coastal weather it enjoyed. But Jon barely noticed any of it. The next morning at dawn, he took Tyrion's body down to the Hall of Heroes, where he could hear the rushing water.

"There is a place where the sea comes in," Tyrion had told him.

And now that he was here, Jon could hear Tyrion's voice as clearly as though he was standing there beside him.

"Leave me there, and the waves will take me."

Jon pulled off the shroud and ran a hand through Tyrion's hair one last time, before giving him a push off a ledge above a pool of white, turbulent water.

He slipped into the undertow, and the next moment he was gone.

But Jon stayed in that small chamber for the better part of an hour, listening to the echo amplify that wild, already-deafening roar, the sound of an ocean that was clean and white and always changing.

Forty days and forty nights she flew across the narrow sea, over the Free Cities. She counted them from the air—Braavos, Norvos, Volantis—and tried to imagine their streets bustling below her but each one looked calm and well-organized compared to Westerosi cities, whose streets met at odd angles and wound around landmarks and were occupied by masses of disheveled poor.

She wanted to fly down to the Free Cities and ask their secrets, but there wasn't time. She flew hard by day and night, sleeping in open fields when she had to, her head spinning, dreaming nothing, wrapped in a cloak of Targaryen red.

When began to see the grey outlines of the pyramids of Meereen, a lump appeared in her throat and she flew faster, knowing the pyramids were farther away than they looked, rising from the flat plane of the river delta.

"I would seek an audience with Missandei of Naath," she told the stunned tower guard of the pyramids.

And then she felt the slightest tinge of anger when the boy took her up the pyramid and she found herself on the floor of her old throne room, in the supplicant's position, looking up at the windows and the looming throne.

Missandei, her eyes widening to see her Queen, quickly corrected the error, descending the steps and inviting her to sit at a table on the terrace, where they could be equals. But the damage was done.

Dany didn't touch the refreshment they brought her, four slices of sugared lemon, and asked for cold water instead.

"Your Grace," said Missandei, inclining her head. Around them her children, all small, brown-skinned boys, played, and the breeze was pleasant up so high, with the view of the city spread out below them.

"You seem very comfortable here," Dany said, watching Missandei eye the lemon. Her former scribe would not eat until she did.

Over Missandei's shoulder, Dany saw an elegant man in silk who was probably Missandei's husband. He was following their conversation too closely for her liking. Dany frowned imperceptibly. Missandei remained loyal, in spite of appearances, but perhaps her new husband was less so.

"We have missed you, Khaleesi," Missandei said in her well-trained voice.

Dany nodded, but the title felt odd, like it didn't belong to her anymore.

"We have heard ominous news from the Westerosi capital," she added.

Her stomach lurched, thinking of the Tyrells.

"They said the bells were ringing in King's Landing," said Missandei, a line of concern appearing between her brows. "You had promised you would visit and when you didn't come and then we had news of the bells…"

The bells.

_The bells toll for the sacking of a city. A dead king._

Dany couldn't remember who had told her that—it could have been her brother, long ago. But she knew what had happened in that moment, and she had to go on sitting in that chair and not eating the lemon like it meant nothing to her.

"An elder administrator has been ill," she said smoothly. "The bells toll for his passing, I am sure, and nothing else."

Sansa Stark of Winterfell, it had to be the ever-enigmatic Lady Sansa who had made that gesture.

"I am quite alright, and remain the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and Meereen, the Liberator of Astapor, and Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea," Dany said, smiling. She felt tears gather at the back of her throat, hard and unshed. "Who are you now, Missandei of Naath? What titles do they call you, here in secret where they presume I cannot hear?"

Missandei looked embarrassed. "Your Grace, this one has only tried to do what is best for your kingdom. I have done everything you asked of me."

"Yes, you have," said Daenerys. "And more besides. But I suspect that is your husband's doing, not your own."

The other woman looked frightened, but Dany took Missandei's hands in hers.

"And you have done well," Dany said. She heard her own words she spoke next as though it was someone else saying them—curiously, like a student listening to an intriguing lecture.

"Your people are fed and orderly and happy," she went on, gesturing to the city below.

Indeed, they were. Every guard she'd seen on the way up the tower was one of a group of young men, japing with their fellows and shirking their duty to the point that they failed to recognize their rightful queen when she appeared.

At 16, 17, 18, they were boys still, not warriors. They had the bearing of trained soldiers who knew nothing but peace.

Missandei's shoulders relaxed, but there was still that line between her brow. "Your Grace, I would have preferred that you were here to see them become that way. I feel I have failed you."

"You have not failed me," said Dany. "The kingdom is yours. You have governed well, and earned it."

Missandei looked stunned.

Not knowing how to express her gratitude, she fell to her hands and knees and kissed Dany's robe.

Dany let her, wondering why she was giving up her kingdom like this, but she was more concerned about how natural it felt, how inevitable, as if all along she'd planning to come to Meereen and do exactly this, in just this way, on top of this pyramid in this exact light, with the same wind and the moon in that exact phase rising into the deep blue of the late afternoon.

"Your Grace, I do not deserve this generosity. I will do everything in my power to continue what you have done."

Dany almost replied that there was no need for promises when Missandei had upheld her rule for so long.

But behind Missandei, the man in silk was watching Dany with a baffled, distrustful expression.

Dany met his gaze with her own cold Queen's mask of a smile, but felt a roiling fear in her stomach. Had she made the right decision?

It was not what Tyrion would have done.

But Tyrion was dead.

"I would ask something of you before I go," said Dany, her eyes sliding back to Missandei.

"Anything, Your Grace."

"I have traveled many days and I am weary. I will require a bed and a bottle of your finest wine."

"Of course, Your Grace," Missandei says, her tone recalling the girl she was when she served Daenerys, but this time she had girls of her own bring them their wine and see Dany to her bedchamber, the Westerosi queen changed into a Qartheen gown that bore one breast.

It was strange, to be so frank about the flesh after years of hiding under furs and scarves, but it was pleasant, and she found herself enjoying the breeze and the smell of the high tide rolling into the bay more than the wine.

Dany drank but little, while Missandei went through three glasses.

The wine tasted foul to her. There was nothing wrong with it—a fine young wine from a fertile region—but it sat heavily in her lungs and chest, weighing her down. She struggled to match Missandei's smiles and laughter, and the end of the night came too slowly for her; by that time the corners of her vision had grown so dark she could barely see. She found herself thinking of Jon. Not a happy thought—she saw him on his knees covering his face with his hands.

She fell asleep thinking of him, and rose a few hours later, before dawn, leaving a note and side-stepping Missandei's sleeping form. Her friend's face was illuminated by the light of the rising sun coming in through the blinds.

But after one last look, Dany was gone.

She flew to the Great Grass Sea.

There was a place where a cliff rose out of the featureless plains. Alone and monumental, something about it impressed her when she passed through with Drogo, when she was pregnant with their son.

It had been a long time since she'd set foot on this land. But the route came to her easily once she passed Vaes Dothrak. She could see her shadow on the ground, and she could feel the fear reaching up to her from the encampments below. The Dothraki did not shoot her down. They respected her authority now, however grudgingly, but they didn't consider themselves her subjects.

Once she reached the cliff all human settlement was behind her, and then she was alone, listening to the wind hiss between the grasses.

As soon as she dismounted, Drogon flew behind the cliff, and she stood there, waiting for him to return. But minutes passed and that triumphant black shape did not reappear. Dany felt a small amount of worry about the separation, as she always did whenever her children hid from her, but as the minutes became a quarter of an hour, a calm descended on her. Dragon would return soon, and she would either climb up the ridge of his back, or she would stand there indefinitely, her cloak rippling in that perfect stunned silence, her mind empty as an expanse.

It felt as if she was the first human woman to see this cliff.

That wasn't true, of course. Not only had Drogo's horde passed beside the cliff, this was a well-known place to most Dothraki, who often came here to break herds of wild horses. Who knew, in fact, how many khalasars had thundered past these plains? How many hooves had struck the soft ground, how many Khals had surveyed from the overlook and called to make camp? And women with their children in arms had obeyed them.

There was no sign of it now. Any of it. The Dothraki did not build castles, like they did in Westeros, aside from a few token monuments in the capital. There was no trace of Drogo's khalasar; the people who once called her Khaleesi and hailed the birth of the Stallion That Mounted the World were gone, whether they were absorbed into a new khalasar, or whether they'd stayed behind to follow her and were now transformed into something else.

_This is also happening in Westeros,_ she realized. _Fifteen years ago I took the Seven Kingdoms in fire and blood, but now I am greying and my sandals are worn around my feet, yet I have left no heir._

Soon Westeros would be something else too.


End file.
